Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Poor wretch! he read, and read, and read

More on the dangers of reading, this time Coleridge in Lyrical Ballads

So he became a rare and learned youth:
But O! poor wretch! he read, and read, and read,
Till his brain turned; and ere his twentieth year
He had unlawful thoughts of many things.

See also earlier posts on the same therme on Dostoevsky and on Flaubert and Dante